There may have been a time when
associations could keep their members engaged by crafting a single message,
dropping it into a monthly or quarterly newsletter, and getting the word out by
some combination of mail, fax, or e-blast.

It’s worth pondering whether that was ever
the ideal strategy, even in the days when it was accepted practice. Today, with
some pundits going so far as to declare the death of push marketing, you can and
must do better.

It’s easy to find the right technology and
the right advice to open a varied, creative conversation that will thrill your
members and keep them passionately engaged with their association. The first step is to ask yourself how many
“memberships” you actually have.

Do veteran members, with many
years in the organization and perhaps decades in your industry or sector, have
the same needs and interests as new arrivals?

Do all your members have the
same educational needs?

Are there specialist groups
within the association who need careful attention to their own unique issues?

Do all your members prefer the
same mix of printed and electronic publications, of live and virtual events?

These and other differences are the
hallmark of a healthy, diverse association. And they point to the need—and the
opportunity—to delight, engage, and retain different membership segments by
giving them:

The information they want

In the formats they prefer

At the frequency they expect.

Your effectiveness in segmenting your market depends on the profile information you receive from your
members and the insights you can gain by testing different messages with your
various memberships. The most targeted approach, granular segmentation, is too
expensive and sophisticated for most associations when it’s practiced at the
level of an amazon.com.

But
with the right stakeholder engagement program, you can create the same benefit for members who
receive exactly what they need from their association. If you get this right, you
won’t have to spend a lot of time telling your members how committed you are to
engaging with them: They’ll be able to see and feel it, and the results will
come back to you in their avid participation and continuing financial support.

With the economy just beginning to bounce
back and everybody’s time at a premium, association members will only stay
engaged and continue paying their dues if there’s something they love about
their membership.

So finding that critical connection point and
keeping the love alive has to be a top priority for your organization.

In the last edition of The Membership Engagement Blog, we listed the three questions you
can ask to identify vulnerable members. The answers you receive will help you
measure your success at two of the most important pursuits for any association:

Keeping members engaged from
the moment they join

Pulling members back into the
fold if their attention has begun to stray

Members might join the organization for any
number of reasons—for professional development (whether it’s mandatory or
self-directed), business networking, or career advancement. Their needs may
also change as their relationship with the association evolves, or as they progress
through your industry. That’s why it’s so important to segment your audience, to understand what information and resources each member
needs and wants from the moment they join.

In Canada, the federal government has
enacted a new set of privacy provisions that lay out a reasonably good roadmap for understanding
your audience. Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) establishes
different levels of consent for sending information to members, prospects, or
other contacts. The rules may look heavy-handed at first, but there’s a payoff:

You can learn more about your
members and why they joined by inviting them to choose the topics, formats, and
frequency of communication they want to receive from you.

You’ll have better touch points
with more satisfied members if you periodically remind them that they get to
choose the information they receive from you, and decide how often they want to
hear from you.

How
effectively do you segment your audience, to make sure each member receives the
specific communication that s/he finds most useful and compelling? Drop us a line
to tell us about it, and let us know if you’d like us to tell your story
(anonymously) in a future blog post.

On any given day, some proportion of your
members are probably a bit less engaged with your association than they were
the day before.Those ups and downs are natural. But when
the relationship becomes weak enough, you run the risk that some members will
leave the organization. Do you know how to read the signs of an impending
breakup and rekindle the relationship before it’s too late?Every member has their own excellent reason
to connect with your association when they first join up. And it’s easy to spot
the most engaged members, because you always see them—volunteering for
committees, speaking at conferences, driving social media traffic, and playing
other leadership roles in the life of the organization.

The majority of members are probably
quieter, and that makes them harder to read. Many of them may be satisfied with
the benefits they receive, but you won’t know for sure unless you listen
carefully and reach out constantly.

In a 2010 white paper, Lebanon,
Indiana-based Association Metrics suggested three questions to help you classify your members as
loyal, neutral, or vulnerable, and are still very relevant today:

1.If a friend or relative asked you about the
association, how likely would you be to recommend they join?

2.When your current membership is about to expire, how
likely will you be to renew?

A negative rating in response to any one of
these questions is your signal that a member is vulnerable. And if you can spot
a particular characteristic—age, income, educational level, years in your industry,
or years in the association—that is more prevalent among vulnerable members, it
may point to a cluster of members who are headed for a breakup.Do
you have an innovative strategy for keeping members
loyal and engaged? Drop us a line to tell us about it, and let us know if you’d like us to tell your
story (anonymously) in a future blog post.